Tennyson, Watts, and the Strength of Ten

Tennyson’s poem “Sir Galahad,” written in 1834 and first published in 1842, opens with lines whose impact far exceeded their quality: “My good blade carves the casques of men, /  My tough lance thrusteth sure, / My strength is as the strength of ten, / Because my heart is pure.”

Galahad’s purity represented to some a kind of moral chivalry that was accessible even to those without the strength or wealth usually associated with knighthood. While the poem was illustrated by a number of artists, it was the painting Sir Galahad (1862) by George Frederic Watts (1817-1904) that became most closely linked to it. Although Watts denied that he had Tennyson’s lines in mind when he painted the picture, the public associated Watts’ devout young knight with Tennyson’s pure Galahad. In fact, a symbiotic intertextual relationship developed between the painting and the poem, each of which had a greater popularity and cultural resonance because of its association with the other. The two combined to offer a moral view of chivalry that allowed young men to imagine themselves living in the spirit of Arthurian knighthood. In particular, the lines about the strength of ten echoed throughout popular culture in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; and the image of Watts’ knight is often reproduced as an example to the young. Often they are combined, as in in Sir Galahad: A Call to the Heroic by James Burns, which uses a version of the Watts painting (which the artist presented to Eton College) and the quotation from Tennyson’s “Sir Galahad” to encourage and inspire the young soldiers who would be called to the “great purpose” of fighting in defense of Britain in the World War.